Putin’s goals
Angelo M. Codevilla wrote this piece in 2014. That’s quite a while ago, but it gave me some insight on the question of why Putin has decided to attack the entirety of Ukraine.
I already felt I knew the “why now?” of the attack; Putin is well aware of the current weakness of the west, as I’ve said before. But I had thought he would be more incremental in his approach, as he’s been before, and just try to peel off this section and then that section with the most inhabitants of Russian ethnicity, and the world would keep on sleeping just as it did with Crimea and portions of Georgia.
I didn’t doubt that he wanted all of Ukraine and more. I just thought he’d go about it differently.
Here’s Codelvilla in 2014:
Vladimir Putin is playing for the highest geopolitical stakes. Can the U.S. government afford to do less?…[T]here is no doubt at all about his long term objective: to recapture trouble-making power over Ukraine, to use that trouble-making power to restore Ukraine as the crown jewel of the Russian Empire, then to squeeze the rest of the former Soviet empire back into Moscow’s fold, and then to overawe Europe.
Well, yes.
Codevilla goes on to recommend a harder line by the US in terms of powerful sanctions:
…[The US should regard] the struggle over Ukraine as a wake up call to treat the Putin regime for what it is, an enemy of the United States.
Treating the Putin regime as an enemy would involve cutting its sources of foreign exchange by the U.S. initiating its own antitrust prosecution of his regime’s cash-cow, Gazprom, freezing all Russian accounts in U.S. banks (thereby forcing the world’s banks to choose between dealing with Russians or with the U.S. financial system), as well as forcing foreign countries to choose between allowing Russia’s liquefied gas ships to their ports, and doing business with the U.S.
Serious economic sanctions against the Putin regime would include a full-court press against its mainstays: the network of self-interested oligarchs who are Putin’s only real constituents.
…There is really one and only one way to achieve that: namely for the United States, after consultation with major allies, to announce secondary sanctions on this new Nomenklatura’s travel and finances.
That’s how sanctions are supposed to work to starve the regime of the means to do damage. We know that for a variety of reasons, the squeeze was not put on Putin when it might have mattered.
Here’s Codevilla on why he thought Putin wasn’t going for just the eastern, Russia-dominated sections of Ukraine:
Nor is Putin trying to unite the Eastern Ukraine to Russia, because doing so would preclude achieving his long-term objective of taking back all of that country politically. The departure of the East would leave a people composed almost exclusively of Ukrainian-speaking Catholics, unshakably oriented to the West, united, wholly foreign to Russia. In such a country, Russia would have no levers to pull.
After all, it was precisely to forestall the emergence of such a unit within the Soviet Union that Stalin originally drew Ukraine’s borders to include lots of Russians.
That answer makes a lot of sense to me.
Codevilla’s death was a huge loss. I had the pleasure of meeting him a few years ago.
Biden’s EOs signed on inauguration day could have been dictated by Putin.
I’ll limit myself to the observation that Prof. John Mearshimer and a number of other observers profoundly disagree with Cordevilla’s analysis.
Putin is finished, Xi is next. They have been appeasing Xi to focus on destroying Putin, once Putin is finished, they will go after Xi next.
Piled higher and Deeper Mearshimer? Otay.
Well it is suspected that Vlad has quite a bit of “influence” over Brandon. Who is forcing whom?
Not mentioned here, nor VDH, nor earlier Vox, is one huge source of popular Russian support for Putin.
He is Pro-family and anti-woke, calling them lies.
It is clear to all willing to look, that LGBTQ anti-Christianity degrades morality and truth. Putin, like many, opposes this gender ideology, and fights against it. That fight is popular.
This invasion is not.
Putin’s upped the ante (if the report is accurate):
“Kremlin ‘sends more than 400 mercenaries from private militia into Kyiv to assassinate President Zelensky and his government’ – with group told peace talks are ‘smoke and mirrors'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10558749/Kremlin-sends-400-mercenaries-Kyiv-assassinate-President-Zelensky.html
Not encouraging, if a bit sensational.
Not too surprising, either.
I wonder how it was leaked and, if it was, what the ramifications might be….
Another useful contrarian complement to Mearsheimer’s analysis is provided by Lee Smith, writing for Tablet (the piece, posted a few days ago, is entitled “Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble”). Smith is an exceptionally fine and very knowledgeable journalist who has written at length about Russiagate and is neither an admirer of Putin nor unsympathetic to the Ukrainians. Unlike most of today’s “chatterati”, however, he has a very nuanced approach to a very complicated geopolitical situation which has been reduced by many, left and right, to a simplistic Manichaean tale of tale of “good” versus “evil.” He discusses, inter alia, our part in the coup of 2014 and the endemic corruption in Ukraine.
Another useful contrarian complement to Mearsheimer’s analysis is provided by Lee Smith, writing for Tablet (the piece, posted a few days ago, is entitled “Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble”).
It’s not useful at all. It’s column-inches filler.
however, he has a very nuanced approach to a very complicated geopolitical situation which has been reduced by many, left and right, to a simplistic Manichaean tale of tale of “good” versus “evil.”
Thanks for the platitude. Been an education.
Well, maybe 🙂 That may be part of it but I suspect it wasn’t what triggered the invasion. My guess is that Putin saw the Ukraine becoming a threat. But it is only a guess. Motives are easily rationalized, what actually drives people is hard to discern.
A lot has been made here of the threat of NATO expansion to Russia. It is not a threat to Russia. It is a threat to Putin. It is a threat to his power and his ambitions. Dictators stay in power. It’s what they do – it’s ALL they do. Learned that from Codevilla a long time ago.
Mike Plaiss:
Agreed.
But, as Tom Grey said, Putin also purposely presents a cultural counter to Western woke-ism.
One thing’s certain.
The current Russian government (such as it is) lies as well as the Soviets:
“Russia–Ukraine Ceasefire Talks End With No Agreement”—
https://www.theepochtimes.com/russia-ukraine-ceasefire-talks-end-with-no-agreement_4306941.html
My completely uninformed and idiotic opinion…
Putin launched a VERY limited invasion of Ukraine, with the goal of getting Ukraine to sue for peace and accept a bunch of conditions (No NATO membership ever,etc.)
Ukraine, however, has decided to fight it out and use the moment to rally the world to its side.
I really hope I’m entirely wrong because if that’s what is happening, it is going to work out very badly for Ukraine.
Mike
“It is a threat to his power and his ambitions.”
It is a threat to the power and ambitions of ANYONE who wants to run Russia and doesn’t want it to be eternally subservient to the U.S. and western Europe.
Mike
Maybe Russia should solve some internal Russian problems? They do have immense nutural resources, but political institutions, not so much.
Dick Morris says one should listen precisely to what Putin is saying, believe what he says (and not prefer to think it’s mere rhetoric); and then draw the necessary conclusions:
“Dick Morris: Putin’s Real Goal is Toppling US”—
https://www.newsmax.com/morris/putin-united-states/2022/02/28/id/1058816/
(In which case it appears that Putin and “Biden” are pretty much in agreement.)
MBunge:
“Eternally subservient?”
If Russia wasn’t both territorially expansionist and belligerent, NATO and the US wouldn’t have to defend against it. NATO began during the Cold War, and it had the explicit goal of protecting Europe from further expansion of the USSR. When I was young, not only were Ukraine and Belarus part of the USSR, but the countries of Hungary, Poland, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia were all Soviet-controlled satellites. The USSR didn’t want to stop there, either.
When the Soviet Union fell, it lost its satellites as well as those countries that were part of the USSR itself. Tough. Putin has never gotten over it – and he has said as much over the decades, repeatedly and clearly. NATO was a response to all of that, not a cause.
Barry Meislin:
On that, I’m with Dick Morris (a person with whom I do not usually agree).
I always think that when leaders say what their alarming plans are we shouldn’t imagine that they’re lying or exaggerating. That’s especially the case when they repeat those aims over and over again, and then act to procure them.
Leaders usually don’t make their aims sound worse than they really are. If they lie, it tends to be on the side of stating aims that are better than they really are. If they say they aim to take over a lot of territory, assume that’s exactly what they aim to do.
Geoffrey Britain:
Mearshimer is quite a piece of work. See also this.
For a refutation of Mearshimer’s position re Ukraine, see this.
It is a threat to the power and ambitions of ANYONE who wants to run Russia and doesn’t want it to be eternally subservient to the U.S. and western Europe.
They’re not subservient now. Annexing the Ukraine subjugates the Ukraine. It does not render Russia an independent power.
Putin launched a VERY limited invasion of Ukraine, with the goal of getting Ukraine to sue for peace and accept a bunch of conditions (No NATO membership ever,etc.)
Thanks for the issue of your imagination.
You’d do well to actually read what he said and read the sort of discourse common among Russian nationalists.
MBunge:
From Putin’s speech on 2/22/22:
History reports otherwise, however:
Russia sure has a funny way of trying to delay the outbreak of war. The war Putin is describing is the one against Germany, not the one it waged with Germany in order to grab some of Empire Russia for itself.
Putin also said in the Feb. 22 speech, comparing the west to Nazi Germany as aggressor:
It seems that Putin is well aware of the deterrent value of nuclear weaponry. He doesn’t seem to think it has that value for other nations who are far less aggressive than Russia, though.
More from Putin [emphasis mine]:
Let’s pause to reflect on what he’s saying. Russia is surrounded by lands that are Russian where the people have no reason to hate Russia except that they are fully controlled from the outside. Their not wanting to be part of Russia has nothing whatsoever to do, according to Putin, with their own ethnicity or feeling a being a separate nation, with atrocities Russia has committed against them (Holodomor, anyone?), the attractiveness of the west either economically or culturally to them compared with Russia, or with simply wanting autonomy to decide their own destiny.
No, no, of course not. It’s all big bad NATO, putting these countries behind a new Iron Curtain and keeping them from their obvious love for Mother Russia.
More from Putin. After talking about the Ukrainian “genocide of the millions of people” who live in Dombass, he said:
That’s why he started with the USSR’s fight against Germany in WWII. He says the people in Ukraine who don’t want to be part of Russia are Nazis committing genocide, therefore the whole of Ukraine must be taken over, de-Nazified, and people affiliated with the regime must be tried by the Russians and punished.
This neo-Nazi thing refers to some neo-Nazi militias in western Ukraine who are not in the government; it’s something like what the left does here vis a vis Trump, the January 6ers, and neo-Nazi movements. There are such movements in Ukraine, but their power and size are way exaggerated by Putin, for his own purposes.
He continues:
This was of course right before the invasion. Subsequent events have certainly proven that that was a lie. An invasion is certainly “by force.”
And here’s a truly fascinating piece of Orwellian sophistry from Putin:
See, there’s the REAL Ukrainian people, who are with Russia, and then there are the fake usurpers who “have taken Ukraine” hostage. The fake ones are all Nazis, and we need to fight WWII over again and liberate Ukraine from the Nazis.
Later he expands on this same theme by appealing to the Ukrainian military with the same argument:
By the way, a little historical aside – a lot of those Ukrainian fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers didn’t fight the Nazi occupiers because initially they welcomed the Germans as liberators from the hated Russians who had exacerbated the famine and helped to starve them in the 1930s.
Then Putin repeats his threats towards anyone who would stop him:
This comment of mine is already getting very long and I’ll probably turn it into a post for tomorrow. So for now I’ll just add that Putin has been asserting for years that Ukraine is not a real country – it is a Russian creation and part of Russia. So although in that Feb 22 speech he talks about wanting countries to preserve their autonomy (which I believe is something he absolutely does not actually support, except for Russia), he has also said many times that Ukraine is not a real country. See where we’re going here?
China is not afraid militarily of western or western leaning countries on its border, nor is Russia. They are, however, afraid of the West’s vibrancy and creativity – its freedoms – because freedom means questioning what has been. They want their 5000 year history, their Mother Russia, even though it was the West that made the modern world what it is.
China and Russia both want their cake and eat it too.
Treating the Putin regime as an enemy would involve cutting its sources of foreign exchange by the U.S. initiating its own antitrust prosecution of his regime’s cash-cow, Gazprom, …
Speaking of Gazprom, here is an almost ancient bit of history.
From Wikipedia:
Gerhard Schoder, rope salesman extraordinaire. Back then, I knew that this would not bode well for the west.
Then Schoder hooks up with Rosneft and the China Investment Corporation (CIC).
What a rotten kettle of fish. Based on their natural resources and their education system, Russia could be a wealthy nation. Ukraine as well. But they both suffer from a corruption of economic practices that stem, I guess, from their history. You cannot do business in Russia or Ukraine without paying bribes to various rent seekers at all levels of government. It tends to become a corruptocrat system with only a few oligarchs able to bulldoze their competition. They have no system of institutions or cultural knowledge of how competition, private property rights backed by courts, a reasonably honest democratic government, and a fair banking system enables an economy to grow and prosper.
Rather than seeking to regain old territory, Putin should be trying to improve the lot of the average Russian. Unfortunately, that’s not in his thinking. A prosperous Russia, open to do business with the world would not have to worry about NATO. Sad that he doesn’t see it. And sadder yet for the Ukrainians because of his paranoia and interpretation of history.
Codevilla’s post was referenced in the Reading Putin’s Mind thread, and I wrote extensively about it this morning before looking into Neo’s new posts.
FWIW
https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/02/27/reading-putins-mind/#comment-2610276
I also pulled together some references on Zelenskyy that paint a very intriguing picture of the newest Hero of the Age.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/02/27/reading-putins-mind/#comment-2610288
And more questions than there are answers at the moment.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/02/27/reading-putins-mind/#comment-2610260
What does Putin want? Part of the answer lies in the concept of “natural borders.” That concept states that large empires will continue to expand until they run into natural — as opposed to political — borders. Lines on a map are hard to defend, but even modern armies have difficulty crossing seas, mountain ranges, and vast deserts.
The natural borders of the United States are the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Great Lakes, and the Rio Grande. The Roman Empire’s natural borders were the Sahara Desert, the Atlantic Ocean, the Rhine, and the Danube.
Many Russian nationalists see Russia’s natural western border being the Carpathian Mountains, the Baltic Sea, and the Gulf of Bothnia.
Pull out a map of Europe and look at Russia’s current western border. It starts in the north near the North Cape and meanders southward along the borders of Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine until it reaches the Sea of Azov. Nowhere along that border is a natural feature that would stop a modern army. It’s just a curve on a map.
Now draw a line from the North Cape to the Gulf of Bothnia, another one from the Gulf of Gdansk to the northern tip of the Carpathian Mountains, and finally one from the southeastern tip of the Carpathians to the Black Sea. The length of those lines is much, much shorter than Russia’s current western border — only about a third as long. The rest of the border comprises natural features difficult for armies to cross.
If you were tasked with defending a border against a rich and increasingly united people to your west, all other things being equal, which border would you rather defend?
This is the border nationalist Russians want. It’s also why they are threatening Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Moldova, Romania, and Bulgaria in addition to Ukraine (they’re already all but annexed Belarus). To tie this back to a previous thread, NATO expansion doesn’t threaten Russia’s existing border. It threatens the border they really want.
Putin propaganda machine pumping on all cyclinders:
“Moscow accuses UK Foreign Secretary of prompting Putin’s nuclear alert”–
https://www.debka.com/mivzak/moscow-accuses-uk-foreign-secretary-of-prompting-putins-nuclear-alert/
I think at this point, it’s best for Ukraine and allies not to respond directly to anything that comes out of there.
Just DO what they think fit and issue an accompanying blurb: “What we are doing is for the interests of peace and the well-being of both Ukrainians and Russians.” PERIOD.
Otherwise, one gets caught up in the “framing” and “shaming” game—and given Russian pre-eminence in that department, one ends up ALWAYS playing defense.
To mkent’s point, and those of some others, including Geoffrey Britain, I really, really recommend this video:
https://youtu.be/If61baWF4GE
It’s a very comprehensive and detailed (for its conciseness) view of how Putin likely sees the world.
This is the border nationalist Russians want. It’s also why they are threatening Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Moldova, Romania, and Bulgaria in addition to Ukraine (they’re already all but annexed Belarus). To tie this back to a previous thread, NATO expansion doesn’t threaten Russia’s existing border. It threatens the border they really want.
Good point.
I think what this neglects, however, is the social border. The Rio Grande isn’t a consequential impediment to the movement of troops. The Polk Administration sought the area north of the Rio Grande because it was bereft of Mexican settlement. Texas had about 3,000 Mexican settlers in 1836. The native born population of California in 1850 was less than 7,000, similar to the population of the Spanish missions at the close of the 18th century. New Mexico had about 60,000 residents. The rest of the territory was populated with aboriginal bands.
The analogue to American (and Canadian) expansion is not any activity in Europe. It is the Russian settlement of Siberia, which was contested by just whom? That area you say Russian nationalists want has 120 million people living in it and a domestic product of around $3 tn (Russia’s population is about 150 million and its domestic product is around $4.3 tn). And you’re going to take it over and stomp ’em all into submission. That’s Hitler-level lunacy.
What a rotten kettle of fish. Based on their natural resources and their education system, Russia could be a wealthy nation. Ukraine as well. But they both suffer from a corruption of economic practices that stem, I guess, from their history.
Russia is a high-middle income country which has seen handsome improvements in economic and social conditions over 20 years. They’re as affluent as they have ever been vis a vis the west. It is the Ukraine that is severely underperforming economically. Russia underperforms in public health.
What we’re facing is a function of Russia’s prosperity, intermediated through the madcap desires of a controlling section of their political class.
So although in that Feb 22 speech he talks about wanting countries to preserve their autonomy (which I believe is something he absolutely does not actually support, except for Russia), he has also said many times that Ukraine is not a real country. See where we’re going here?
Again, Unz hosts a blog of street-level Russian nationalists. This is what they tell themselves. They’re all literate in English, a number are expatriates, and the moderator lived in the United States for 26 years.
Rufus T., thanks for the video link. Explains a lot.
Art Deco, thanks for your usual economic research. Data is one thing, seeing the facts on the ground is another. I’ve been there. I have contacts who go there frequently. No western European citizen or American would move there for the standard of living, to say nothing of the corruption. Why aren’t the Russians having children? Because there is little optimism about the future, and they can’t afford the cost. Vlad has not succeeded as a populist – only as an oligarch.
Why aren’t the Russians having children? Because there is little optimism about the future, and they can’t afford the cost. Vlad has not succeeded as a populist – only as an oligarch.
The total fertility rate in Russia was in 2019 1.5 children per woman per lifetime. That in the U.S. was 1.7. Russia’s has fallen off in the last few years (it was 1.84 in 2016, the same as ours), but is much improved from what it was in 2000 (1.16). The mean for the EU is 1.5. South Korea’s is 0.9 and has been below replacement level for > 40 years.
Dennis Prager – I have a few quibbles (we have NOT always defended the weak), but otherwise a sound analysis.
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2022/03/01/on-ukraine-comedians-nato-america-and-environmentalists-n2603946?utm_campaign=inarticle